Tag Archives: Sarah Pharaon

Planning for the 250? This Webinar Will Help You Get Started

Join Conny Graft and Max van Balgooy on May 24 at 3:00 pm Eastern for a ninety-minute webinar on interpretive planning as we prepare for the U.S. 250th anniversary in 2026. To help you feel more confident in this specialized topic, we will discuss the basic process of interpretive planning, provide a simple rubric to develop goals, and distinguish topics and themes (and why themes are more valuable). As a bonus, we’ll briefly mention ways to identify target audiences and expand your thinking about methods and formats. Registration is $20; $10 for AASLH members.

It’s the start of a three-part series on interpreting the 250th at historic sites and house museums. Other sessions will dive into the field-wide themes for the 250th with Ashley Jordan (African American Museum in Philadelphia) and Steve Murray (Alabama Department of Archives and History) and offer an interactive platform to workshop ideas with fellow practitioners with Sarah Pharaon (Dialogic Consulting). Whether you have a clear tie to the Revolution or not, this webinar series will help you make history relevant and captivating for your audience. Attend all three webinars for $55; $25 for AASLH members.

The American Association for State and Local History is hosting these webinars. Scholarships to attend all three webinars are available on a first come, first served basis, thanks to support from the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust.

HLI Seminar Returned in New Format, New Season

The Class of 2022 celebrating their graduation from the HLI Seminar.

The History Leadership Institute, AASLH’s professional development program for mid-career history professionals, introduced its long-running Seminar in a new format in June.

In 1959, the Seminar began as an effort to train newly graduated history students and directors of history museums in the unique skills of managing museums, historic sites, and archives in a six-week program held at Colonial Williamsburg, During the decades that followed, the Seminar has continually changed to meet the needs of the field and explore new and emerging practices.

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Can You Tackle Today’s Tough Topics in a Garden?

200731_Longwood_Graduate_Program_Symposium_Fochs_Mackenzie-2_0This year’s Longwood Graduate Program Symposium will examine that issue with a top-notch series of nationally-recognized speakers on Friday, March 4, 2016 at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  They’ve laid out a challenging agenda for dealing with topics such as environmental action, civic responsibility, and the evolution of public gardens as community assets. Here’s their description:

Public gardens and cultural institutions are centers of community, science, and art. Today’s society is often overwhelmed with debates in all of these areas. In a world where misspoken words amplify in a matter of minutes, how can institutions tactfully open discussion on today’s difficult topics? When and where do they provide research, resources, and opportunities to interact with new or contested ideas?

Sessions include: Continue reading →

Historic House Museums a Special Focus for the Public Historian

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum by Brandon Bartoszek

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum by Brandon Bartoszek

The May 2015 issue of the Public Historian was just released and provides a dozen articles related to historic house museums.  Lisa Junkin Lopez, associate director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and guest editor of this special issue, provides the criteria that helped her select the articles and her vision of historic house museums:

Though a number of sites have turned to revenue-generating activities like weddings and farmers’ markets to stay afloat, rigorous historical content has not necessarily been quashed in favor of parlor room cocktail hours and heirloom tomato beds. Many sites have recommitted to the project of excavating their own histories, digging deeper to find relevance with contemporary audiences and identifying new methods for engagement along the way.

The individual essays are case studies of various projects at historic house museums, but many question and even break the basic assumptions of museum practices and historic preservation standards.  This shift will need to be watched because Continue reading →